


the beauty of your repair

by addandsubtract



Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: Breathplay, Community: kink_bingo, Dominance, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nightmares start two weeks after James is discharged from hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beauty of your repair

**Author's Note:**

> written for the _breathplay_ square on my kink_bingo table. title from vienna teng's _never look away_.

The nightmares start two weeks after James is discharged from hospital. He has a set of surgery scars on the left side of his torso, three more months of outpatient rehab, and a tiny, over-warm flat that he and Scripps found for cheap on the east side of the city.

Scripps is halfway finished with a series of in-depth articles about the mounting economic tension in the area. He’s been up until all hours in the cramped closet that passes for his office, with his reading glasses pushed down to the tip of his nose, writing by lamplight.

James goes to bed exhausted by stretches and curls and the emotion required to remind his mother that he’s not dead, just injured, and queer, and living with a man he loves. That none of this is his fault. He sleeps for two and a half hours, and wakes up twisted in the sheets, hands curved into claws, remembering blood, so much blood, and the pain that came with it. The sick sensation of morphine that kept him disoriented for days. He hears the echo of the scream he couldn’t swallow.

He’s lying on his back on the mattress, having shoved the quilt to the floor, when Scripps pushes the door open. Scripps is backlit in the entryway, the faint glow from his reading lamp illuminating the tousled hair of a long night’s work, and James hates himself for a moment. It sears through him, and he pulls in a deep, shuddering breath as he tries to ward himself against it. Scripps’s hands are working on the buttons of his shirt, and James watches it fall to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” James says, and he wants to be the cocky and confident boy that Scripps remembers from before, before Oxbridge and the military, but he doesn’t have the energy right now.

“Whatever for?” Scripps sounds confused, tugging his belt from the loops and dropping it on the floor with his shirt. His trousers and briefs follow shortly thereafter.

“Interrupting you,” James says. “Being this way. All of it, I suppose.”

Scripps climbs onto the mattress, and settles with his knees on either side of James’s thighs. He’s warm, and James wants to touch him. He always does.

“None of it is your fault,” Scripps says. “And you’re never interrupting.” He puts both hands on James’s bare chest. His touch is light, and James focuses on that, on breathing and feeling the reverent way that Scripps touches him. “You’re trembling all over,” Scripps adds, after a moment, before leaning down to kiss him.

James lets himself get lost in that kiss, in the way that Scripps bites into his lower lip, in the way he slots their mouths together so he can lick inside James’s. James is naked beneath Scripps, letting Scripps do what he will, and that’s all he wants right now. Scripps kisses him, and kisses him, until James is having trouble breathing. He doesn’t struggle; he just lets the sparks go off in the corners of his eyes until Scripps pulls away. It’s exhilarating, not having to try, not having to fight. He trusts Scripps to do the right thing – make the right choice.

“Jimmy,” Scripps says, and even in the dim light, James can see where his cheeks are flushed.

“Please.” James isn’t sure what it is that he’s pleading for, exactly, he just knows that he needs it. He can still feel the nightmare’s claws in the back of his mind. “Don, c’mon.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scripps says, like James has asked in real phrases. Scripps has always been good at decoding James’s silences and sharp words. He’s always been good at figuring out what James needs, even if James himself doesn’t really know.

Scripps leans over to the bedside table, and pulls out the half-used tube of lube they keep there. They have condoms, somewhere, but they haven’t used them since James came back from the army, gutshot, but with his blood work clean. Scripps leans back and spreads James’s thighs so that he can kneel between them, easing James’s knees up to his chest. James feels exposed, vulnerable, but there’s nothing bad about that, not with Scripps.

The first touch of Scripps’s finger is cold, rubbing over him, and then pushing inside, slow, slow. James shudders, and watches the concentration on Scripps’s face. He’s just as slow with two fingers, then three, using enough lube that James feels slick and open. When Scripps pulls his fingers out and lines up, he leans in to kiss James on the mouth.

“Okay,” he says, “you’re okay,” and he slides in, deliberate and confident. James hasn’t been fucked in awhile – they’ve both been too busy to do much more than rut against each other in the sleepy mornings before they have to leave – and the fullness of it is something that he’s missed. He pants with his mouth open, and Scripps kisses him on the cheek, on the jaw, on the side of the neck.

When Scripps bottoms out, he stays there, motionless, for almost longer than James can handle. Scripps looks down at him, hands propped on either side of James’s head, and James remembers back at Uni, how they’d fuck around, and Scripps would fall asleep in his bed, too warm together during the late fall months, but James hadn’t wanted to pull away.

He hadn’t said he loved Scripps until he was in the army, but he’s not sure it matters. By then they’d both fucked other people – plenty of them, in the rocky aftermath of exams – and come back together. James feels a little like that now – he feels like he was far away, but he’s anchored here, with Scripps, with Scripps inside him.

“Move,” he says, voice wavering. “Please, Don.”

Scripps’s smile is something to behold – cheeky, sentimental – and then he says, “Okay,” again and starts to move.

James is lost to it almost immediately. He can hear the noises: Scripps’s guttural breath, the tacky slide of their bodies together, the wet sound of Scripps pushing into him over and over. Scripps lays him out, sinks into him, makes him feel taken, makes him feel centered, and bettered, and wanted.

It’s almost enough, just the thrust of Scripps’s cock, the brush against his prostate, the blind pleasure. It’s almost enough, but not quite.

“More,” he says. “I need, I don’t –”

Scripps shushes him, and James opens eyes he hadn’t realized that he’d closed, feels both of Scripps’s hands settle over his throat and push.

“I’ve got you,” Scripps says. He’s biting his lower lip, hips still moving. “Trust me.”

And James does. James can’t speak to agree, can’t get the breath for it, but he jerks his head, nods, and feels his lungs start to burn. It doesn’t take long. He thinks of the sparks earlier, when Scripps kissed the breath out of him, and thinks, _yes_. The lack of air heightens the feeling of everything else – the press of Scripps’s body against him, the ache in his thighs where his legs are pushed up against his chest, the hot pleasure of Scripps’s cock inside him. He’s overwhelmed with it, can hear the sound of himself wheezing, the vague comforting noises that Scripps is making over him. Scripps lips on his face, his eyelids and forehead and mouth.

It’s perfect. James’s vision starts to go white around the edges, and soften everything out. He feels his body but feels separate from it, too. He’s floating, and when he starts to come, it washes over him like cool water. The noise he makes gets caught in his throat, and his hips work as he comes, untouched, against his thighs and Scripps chest and both of their stomachs.

Scripps hands leave his throat, then, and some part of James hopes than there will be a bruise there tomorrow. Some lasting soreness to remind him of the feeling of it. He pulls in a breath, then another, marvels at the way the world fills out.

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” Scripps is saying, chanting his name. James can’t help grinning up at him, even as oversensitive and sated as he is. Scripps looks down at him and curses, before pushing in one more time. He kisses James as he starts to come, and James lets him, makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat.

Scripps slumps down onto him, and then, after a moment, rolls off. James can feel Scripps’s come leaking out of him, but he doesn’t care. He’s always liked that.

“Think there’ll be a bruise?” he asks, turning his head to look at Scripps. His voice is wrecked.  
Scripps’s fingers touch his throat, tentative, and James swallows a sound, pained and a little hungry. 

“I don’t know,” Scripps says. He’s silent for a long moment, fingertips trailing over James’s Adam’s apple, his trachea. “Are you okay, now?”

James takes a moment to think on it. “For now,” he says, deciding to be honest. “I can’t say what tomorrow will be like.”

Scripps smiles faintly, doesn’t look surprised. “Alright. I love you, you know that? No matter how long your nightmares last, no matter how hardheaded your misguided, bigoted mother. I’m going exactly nowhere.”

“I know,” James says, and also knows that it’s a marvel Scripps does. James isn’t always the easiest person to live with, and even more difficult to love. He’s moody, sharp tongued. He’s grateful. “Thank you,” he says.

Scripps rolls his eyes, runs a hand through James’s hair. “Shut it. What do you say we shower before either of us falls asleep?”

“Yes, please,” James says, and arches up into Scripps’s touch. He can feel the edges of that nightmare, still there, lurking, but for now, he’ll kiss Scripps in the shower, run his fingers over Scripps’s wet skin, and let it be enough.


End file.
